The most interesting thing of the moment

Archimedes Palimpsest

Archimedes Palimpsest: "The subject of this website is a manuscript of unique importance to the history of science, the Archimedes Palimpsest. This tenth century manuscript is the unique source for two of Archimedes Treatises, The Method and Stomachion, and it is the unique source for the Greek text of On Floating Bodies. Discovered in 1906 by J.L. Heiberg, it plays a prominent role in his 1910-15 edition of the works of Archimedes, upon which all subsequent work on Archimedes has been based. The manuscript was in private hands throughout much of the twentieth century, and was sold at auction to a private collector on the 29th October 1998. The owner deposited the manuscript at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, a few months later. Since that date the manuscript has been the subject of conservation, imaging and scholarship. The Archimedes Palimpsest project, as it is called, has generated a great deal of public curiosity, as well as the interest of scholars throughout the world."

The article said that they were adding the text to the website as it was being read. I couldn't see it. This is fascinating. Reminds of the Vesuvias scrolls talked about here http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.05/vesuvius.html

Until the late '90s, Booras had never heard of the Herculaneum scrolls. Nor had most other laypeople - and rather more surprising, a lot of professional classicists were all but as ignorant. Despite their having been the first papyruses recovered by modern scholars, the Herculaneum scrolls never made it into the mainstream of "papyrology," as studies of smaller stashes found elsewhere have come to be called. Richard Janko, a professor of classics at the University of Michigan, says that this neglect by his profession was extraordinary, but that its cause was clear: "They were just so hard to read."

posted by Matthew O. Smith @ 6:06 AM